‘Global Temperature’ — Why Should We Trust A Statistic That Might Not Even Exist?

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No it doesn't, not from me anyway. But if you post nutcases pseudo-science, I will point out what what you posted is nutcase pseudo-science.

Jim

That's fair.

Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

What invalidates the results is the amount of "massaging" that has to be done to paper over the numerous coverage gaps, and how the historic record has been irreparably corrupted by arbitrary "adjustments" designed to fit the hypothesis rather than adjusting the hypothesis to fit the data.

That isn't what is happening MM. I realize you don't have the background to be able to understand what is actually being done so you just have to take the word of those you trust, but you've basically hitched your train to the wrong wagon. OTOH, any time I've tried (or others) to offer any sort of basic explanation, you just venture off into rank sarcasm and ignore everything that is said. So we have to add in the fact this is willful ignorance on your part.

So what more can be said. You don't want to learn, and you think you already know - so what more is there to say, except that you are wrong.

Jim

He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."

"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets"

The sign of a misspent youth; too much Bible study and not enough education.

The article is a straightforward straw man. The interesting thing about average temperatures over any given area is how it changes over time.

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ― Anne Lamott
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is quite certain Earth will be in trouble if the global temperature exceeds pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius or more. But how can anyone know? According to university research, “global temperature” is a meaningless concept.

“Discussions on global warming often refer to ‘global temperature.’ Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility,” says Science Daily, paraphrasing Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, one of three authors of a paper questioning the “validity of a ‘global temperature.'”

Science Daily explains how the “global temperature” is determined.

“The temperature obtained by collecting measurements of air temperatures at a large number of measuring stations around the globe, weighing them according to the area they represent, and then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points.”

But a “temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system,” says Andresen. The climate is not regulated by a single temperature. Instead, “differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate”.

While it’s “possible to treat temperature statistically locally,” says Science Daily, “it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless.”

There are two ways to measure temperature: geometrically and mathematically. They can produce a large enough difference to show a four-degree gap, which is sufficient to drive “all the thermodynamic processes which create storms, thunder, sea currents, etc.,” according to Science Daily.

So if global temperature is unknowable, how can the IPCC and the entire industry of alarmists and activists be so sure there exists a threshold we cannot pass? Of course the IPCC says it knows the unknowable. In its latest report, released this month, it yet again maintained that the global temperature must “kept to well below 2ºC, if not 1.5oC” above pre-industrial levels to avoid disaster.

A few years after the University of Copenhagen report was published, University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick, one of the report’s authors, noted in another paper that “number of weather stations providing data . . . plunged in 1990 and again in 2005. The sample size has fallen by over 75% from its peak in the early 1970s, and is now smaller than at any time since 1919.”

“There are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications.”

The global warming alarmists, who have seized and now control the narrative — because, like a child who won’t stop crying for a toy he can’t have, they refuse give up — have a credibility problem. Actually, they have several. The public will eventually forget about them all, though, just as it has overlooked the mistakes by those who predicted other catastrophes that never arrived, such as Y2K, the new Ice Age, acid rain, mass human starvation, overpopulation, peak oil, and the Silent Spring.

After all, humans have been watching Doomsday prophets fail throughout history. They’ve been so common we hardly notice them.

The sign of a misspent youth; too much Bible study and not enough education.

The article is a straightforward straw man. The interesting thing about average temperatures over any given area is how it changes over time.

It's an AVERAGE - the mean is next to useless whenever the distribution is wide - as it is with the planet.

Highest Recorded Temperature: 134.1 F (56.7 C)
Lowest Recorded Temperature: -128.6 F (-89 C)
So, the mean is calculated by adding up all the temps taken in a given period in that range and dividing by the number of data points. It's ridiculously skewed because there are a LOT of places we don't take surface temps for (or don't take them regularly) and a lot we CAN'T take surface temps for (war zones are not conducive to long careers if you are dumb enough to try to build a station in them). The range is wide - especially considering how often we're told that a change in the average of only a 1.5 degree C will signal the END OF THE WORLD!

But, of course, it's not a pure average - can't be, it would oscillate too much from reading to reading (averages skew easily) - it has to be weighted.

For a complex system we DON'T fully understand, we're weighting the average temperature. Yeah - no. Amateur night at the OK Corral...

To be honest, I don't think a median would fix that mess - I don't see how either one is meaningful. It's like taking the interior temperature of your car with AC on max, the temperature of the trunk and the running engine temp and averaging them. Easy to do - but what, exactly, does it tell you about the real car? Well, let's see:

Okay, so what does that actually tell us? Not a danged thing. We're reducing a complex machine that has varying parameters to a single measure that has no bearing on car comfort, performance or safety - although the three data points we took bear on those matters individually (yeah, you don't want a trunk that gets as hot as the engine - gasoline vapor can ignite at high temps all by its lonesome. When it does that in the engine, we call it a backfire which is a relatively minor problem. When it does that in the trunk we call that a big explosion...)

But an average of the data points in a FAR MORE COMPLEX SYSTEM is supposed to be meaningful? Yeah, right...

It's an AVERAGE - the mean is next to useless whenever the distribution is wide - as it is with the planet.

Highest Recorded Temperature: 134.1 F (56.7 C)
Lowest Recorded Temperature: -128.6 F (-89 C)
So, the mean is calculated by adding up all the temps taken in a given period in that range and dividing by the number of data points. It's ridiculously skewed because there are a LOT of places we don't take surface temps for (or don't take them regularly) and a lot we CAN'T take surface temps for (war zones are not conducive to long careers if you are dumb enough to try to build a station in them). The range is wide - especially considering how often we're told that a change in the average of only a 1.5 degree C will signal the END OF THE WORLD!

But, of course, it's not a pure average - can't be, it would oscillate too much from reading to reading (averages skew easily) - it has to be weighted.

For a complex system we DON'T fully understand, we're weighting the average temperature. Yeah - no. Amateur night at the OK Corral...

To be honest, I don't think a median would fix that mess - I don't see how either one is meaningful. It's like taking the interior temperature of your car with AC on max, the temperature of the trunk and the running engine temp and averaging them. Easy to do - but what, exactly, does it tell you about the real car? Well, let's see:

Okay, so what does that actually tell us? Not a danged thing. We're reducing a complex machine that has varying parameters to a single measure that has no bearing on car comfort, performance or safety - although the three data points we took bear on those matters individually (yeah, you don't want a trunk that gets as hot as the engine - gasoline vapor can ignite at high temps all by its lonesome. When it does that in the engine, we call it a backfire which is a relatively minor problem. When it does that in the trunk we call that a big explosion...)

But an average of the data points in a FAR MORE COMPLEX SYSTEM is supposed to be meaningful? Yeah, right...

You need to appreciate that it takes a truly enormous amount of heat to raise the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere by ‘only’ 1.5 degrees. Also note that the average temperature of the atmosphere is constant over medium timescales; when it is dark and cold where you are, it is sunny and warm somewhere else. The heat moves about but the average stays the same.

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ― Anne Lamott
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell

You need to appreciate that it takes a truly enormous amount of heat to raise the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere by ‘only’ 1.5 degrees. Also note that the average temperature of the atmosphere is constant over medium timescales; when it is dark and cold where you are, it is sunny and warm somewhere else. The heat moves about but the average stays the same.

It's actually not true - you only need a skew - which is pretty easy to get when you average.

The question is 'does 'average global temperature' actually mean anything in the real world? Averages are seductive because they are so easy to do - but they are easily skewed and frequently run into external validity problems.

That isn't what is happening MM. I realize you don't have the background to be able to understand what is actually being done so you just have to take the word of those you trust, but you've basically hitched your train to the wrong wagon. OTOH, any time I've tried (or others) to offer any sort of basic explanation, you just venture off into rank sarcasm and ignore everything that is said. So we have to add in the fact this is willful ignorance on your part.

So what more can be said. You don't want to learn, and you think you already know - so what more is there to say, except that you are wrong.

Jim

Right... that must be why a significant number of scientists and statisticians reject the global warming hypothesis, and the "consensus" is a load of crap.

Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
Than a fool in the eyes of God